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peach wine

I didn’t quite get around to writing about it, but I did bottle the 3 gallons of Sudden Windfall apple wine on the 7th. It was quite a messy process, as I tried to move the siphon smoothly from one bottle to the next– lots of spillage and evening out of bottles– a little more in this one, a little less in that one. Still, I did get them all done, and I brought a few in for Molly. I’ll pass a few along to Kim, too, to give to her friends who contributed fruit.

Today was a productive one, since it feels mild and spring-like. I weeded a bit, and planted fava beans and edamame, and started tomato and tomatilllo seeds in little pots indoors. I don’t seem to have any saved seed from my Roma tomatoes, so I’ll need to get some more seeds soon.

Then I decided to try out my new Ferrari automatic bottle filler, which turns out to be among the best $15 I ever spent. It goes on the end of the siphon and automatically stops filling when the bottle is just the right amount of full. So with that brilliant little tool, I bottled 3 gallons of Super Vixen Concord, this with Bourgovin yeast, and all 5 gallons of Peach Perfection. (The second photo is with the flash on, so you can see the little bit of cloudiness in the last 2 bottles I filled, in front.) It was delightfully easy, and I barely lost a drop. I had a nice little system going: pop the auto-bottler in, click it open, and, while it filled, grab the last full bottle and cork. Downright efficient, that. Plus, talk about a sense of accomplishment! 30 bottles, all nicely full, and no mopping afterwards.

On another note, a friend (HI MARY!) sent me an article about an extremely cool place in England that rescues overripe or unwanted fruit and turns it into wine, beer, cider, komucha, and kefir: https://old-tree-oz74.squarespace.com/. Brighton isn’t particularly convenient to Maidstone, but I’m hoping to get out to this place anyway next time we visit Jo’s folks. The places is doing all kinds of things to reduce their carbon footprint, and they produce booze, so I love them already.